An N-independent tensor decomposition for SU(N)

A bstract To facilitate a simultaneous treatment of an arbitrary number of colors in representation theory-based descriptions of QCD color structure, we derive an N -independent reduction of SU( N ) tensor products. To this end, we label each irreducible representation by a pair of Young diagrams, with parts acting on quarks and antiquarks. By combining this with a column-wise multiplication of Young diagrams, we generalize the Littlewood-Richardson rule for the product of two Young diagrams to the product of two Young diagram pairs, achieving a general- N decomposition.